Salty update
Alerwoman Brenda Konkel was nice enough to comment on my post from last night about WKOW’s poor “story” about the salt shortage on Madison.com. Specifically she posted an email from Al Schumacher, Madison streets superintendent, about the real story on the situation.
Based on the email, we have 10,000 pounds of salt available for this winter, and have used about 5,800 pounds over seven snowfalls already. In addition, Madison has another 10,000 pounds available if necessary. To me, that says we have about 4 snowfalls worth of salt left with our “regular” supply, and another 10 or so left with the salt in reserve.
Another commenter posted what likely was the actual story Madison.com should have linked to, which isn’t much better than the non-story from before. Al Schumacher’s comments make it seem like the city recognizes they might run low on salt and that they are beign careful applying it, but it doesn’t seem like the panic WKOW is making it sound like. Even better, Schumacher’s email outlines a 300 pounds of salt per lane-mile policy, while WKOW indicates that the policy is half that: 300 pounds per two lane-mile.
Also, good thing the WKOW starts out indicating a salt shortage in paragraph one, but waits to paragraph seven to let us know that we’re in no danger of running out of salt.
Perhaps they should stick to TV news and leave the online stuff to the State Journal.